Tuesday, April 05, 2016

Panama Papers just proves how right Jarvis Cocker was about who runs this fucking world

"The Panama Papers are a massive and historic leak of confidential documents that reveal how the rich and powerful from many countries around the globe use tax havens to hide their wealth."

So says TeleSUR English, which goes on to note: "About 140 high-level officials and millionaires, and about 113,000 shell companies are exposed in the documents, including at least 12 current or former heads of state."

In other words, the rich and powerful are a bunch of dodgy, greedy pricks whose morally offensive activities strip wealth from whole nations -- many trillions in badly needed revenue. It is almost as if the poverty affecting billions is directly related to the obscene wealth of a tiny minority, while all the while the same system enriching these corrupt fuckers is rendering the planet increasingly uninhabitable at a rapid rate.

Well, who could have guessed they could be so mean? Asides, you know, from Bernie Sanders and any other politician, journalist or just plain straight up human being not in the pocket of these pricks.

One individual exposed by this massive leak is Iceland's prime minister, whose government took over failed banks and was the centre of countless fucking Facebook memes about the heroic acts of the Icelandic government in standing up to the banks and the IMF and probably for slaying all the fucking trolls on the island (with no concern about the Icelandic troll-based tourism industry). Yes, it seems leaving the same corporate, financial and political elite in charge of a country that helped cause a disaster, whatever concessions they may give you, doesn't actually change the nature of that elite or the system they run. A bastard is always a fucking bastard.

The lesson here is two-fold:

1) Facebook books memes are not fucking history or news or fucking anything other than grossly over simplified points aiming to distort facts and/or reinforce the meme sharers pre-existing prejudices. WHO THE FUCK KNEW? WHO THE FUCK KNEW FUCKING SOCIAL MEDIA MEMES WERE JUST EMPTY BULLSHIT AND NOT FACTUAL HISTORY??? WHAT NEXT??? BUZZFEED IS NO ACTUAL SUBSTITUTE FOR FUCKING NEWS?????

2) Jarvis Cocker was right.

Former frontman of 1990s Britpop band Pulp, Jarvis Cocker was right way back in 2005. Watching the G8 summit summit with its smiling politicians and rock stars pledging "debt relief" to African countries, while putting forward a deal that actually worsened the debt slavery of the poorest African nations, an angry Cocker immediately wrote a song in response. It is especially targetted at the smug grinning "New Labour" clique running Britain's government at the time,

It is below and it remains to the point*.

Well did you hear, there's a natural order Those most deserving will end up with the most That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the topWell I say: Shit floats.

If you thought things had changedFriend you'd better think againBluntly put in the fewest of wordsCunts are still running the world...

* POSTSCRIPT It is worth noting there is a particularly cynical line in the song about the prospect for popular protest to achieve anything. Just after the glorious line "The free market is perfectly natural -- do you think that I'm some kinda dummy?" Jarvis sings: "if you don't like it then leave or use your right to protest in the streets. Use your rights but don't imagine that it's heard..."

The line is hardly surprising, coming just two years after the largest global protests in human history failed to stop the criminal invasion of Iraq. But Cocker later took the sentiment back and argued popular protest was all we had left, that it was essential to protest against the cunts to have any chance at saving the planet.

In a 2014 op-ed in The Guardian entitled "Climate change is real. Want to live? It's up to people like you":

Remember 15 February 2003? If you’re taking the trouble to read this, then you probably went to an anti-war march that day. Didn’t turn out so well, did it? Nothing really changed. The “largest protest event in human history”, as we remember it today, was effectively ignored. That left a nasty taste. It might even have put you off the idea of protesting forever. The marching boots were thrown to the back of the cupboard and you went into a major sulk. Maybe you even wrote a song about it ...

And you thought: “Yes! Smash the system!” And then ... time passed. Until you got this email [about globally coordinated l climate change protests...

Can you be arsed? Do you risk being disappointed again? Or do you sit this one out?

...

Back in 2008, I sailed the coast of Greenland on a vessel chartered by the organization Cape Farewell and saw the effects of global warming firsthand. It exists. On the way home, we spent a few hours in Reykjavík’s international airport waiting for a connecting flight back to the UK. I bought an ashtray made out of lava. When I got back home, I turned the TV on. It was the morning of the stock market crash and I learned that Iceland, the country I had been visiting not four hours previously, was effectively bankrupt.

That gave me a strange feeling because I hadn’t noticed. The sun had still been shining as I walked through the airport terminal. People had gone about their everyday business as usual, there had been air to breathe and nothing to betray the cataclysm that had befallen the entire country. How could that be? This was a financial crisis! The Big One! THE ECONOMY was at risk! Why was the world still turning?

You whisper now, but could it be that there is a higher power than … THE ECONOMY? I know that sounds a bit sacrilegious, but could it be that THE ECOLOGY is actually the biggie? That maybe having air to breathe, water to drink and land to inhabit could be more important than the fluctuations of the FTSE or the Dow Jones? It’s just a thought – a thought that most people instinctively understanding, but that the political classes have yet to grasp ...

Exactly when did “government for the people” become “government of the people”? When did the function of government change from public service to crowd control? From protector to pimp?

The People’s Climate March this Sunday is important. Because governments won’t put the case for action on climate change too strongly – no, that might be interpreted as being “anti-business”. It might dissuade corporations from building factories in countries that sign on to climate agreements. It might be harmful to THE ECONOMY. So once again it will be left to ordinary people to point out the blindingly obvious fact that destroying the place you live in is not a good idea. It really isn’t. And the powers that be would do well to heed the cold, hard truth that there are more of us than them, that we are heartily sick and tired of being ignored.

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About Me

Gentleman ranter. Proof that if you give a man a mask, he may tell you the truth, but give him enough beer and he'll shout it at you. My life-long ambition is to get more Twitter followers than Taylor Swift (last count, only 34,042,711 behind.) Follow me at @carlogrubsands to make an old man's dream come true.